


Run Dry

by captainflintsjacket



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, F/M, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-29 23:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainflintsjacket/pseuds/captainflintsjacket
Summary: Based on a request: Jim Kirk x reader where the reader is an alcoholic and everyone is trying to help but she in denial.





	Run Dry

You were drowning. It was the only way to explain the tightness in your chest, the labored breathing. Yet, when your eyes snapped open, you were in bed gripping the sheets as if they alone were going to protect you from the nightmare that was being dragged kicking and screaming into your subconscious. You didn’t dare move until your breathing steadied and your knuckles felt like static, muscles stuck too tight too long so it felt like a breath of fresh air when you finally uncurled them. That didn’t stop your hands from shaking.

It was a miracle you made it to the bathroom. Your pillow fell on the floor, a picture fell from the wall you barrelled into but you didn’t care. All you cared about was the cold water running through your fingertips and down your arm as you splashed your face. A drop of water slid down the back of your neck like a caress. You shuddered and opened your eyes. It took every ounce of self-restraint not to scream.

All you could see was blood. Across your hands, across your face. Dripping down your neck and collarbone from a gash across your cheek. It stained the porcelain surface of the sink as it shot out from the faucet. You squeezed your eyes shut, tasting metal and warmth until you opened your eyes again and everything was pristine. The water held your gaze until it reached the limit and shut itself off.

You forced yourself out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. There were still a few hours between you and the workday, but there was no way you’d be going back to sleep without a little help. You poured a drink and walked back to your bed, pulling the sleeping pills out of the top drawer of the nightstand, heart sinking when you found it empty. Whiskey alone would have to do.

Sleep came and went far too quickly for your liking, and too soon you were trudging back down to the Engineering Bay. You took a sip from your thermos, hoping the familiar burn of alcohol would quell the icy knot that had worked its way into your stomach after the chaos of last night. Although it didn’t dissipate completely, by the time you got to work your hands were at least steady enough to hold a wrench and plasma cutter.

The Enterprise was slowly taking shape again. She’d been through so much: Nero, Khan, Krall, and now a deadly scuffle with a rogue Klingon warship. It was a miracle they didn’t just retire her. Or was it a tragedy? How many lives were lost during those battles? How many lives would be lost in the ones to come? Starfleet always said the Enterprise wasn’t a military vessel, but the body count said otherwise. You knew there was a certain risk involved with exploring uncharted territories, but you didn’t expect to spend all of your shore leave burying your friends.

You excused yourself from your work space, blaming the burn in your eyes on the coolant pipe you were working on. It was close enough to lunch that Scotty let you slide out without question, until he noticed you’d left everything behind but your thermos. By the time he grabbed your lunchbag and stood to follow you, you were gone.

You took your lunch in an observation bay, a different one every day to reduce the chance that someone would walk in on you and ask what you were doing. Truth was, you didn’t know - hadn’t known. Not for a long time. You told yourself it was because of Krall. That the Enterprise was supposed to be a beacon of strength, and the fact that Krall destroyed it rattled you, and, sure, you could still hear the metal crunching and the alarms blaring but, most of all, you could still hear your colleagues - your friends - screaming as they rushed to escape pods as the hull of the Enterprise creaked around them. You could still hear the snap as a support beam gave way and a patch ceiling fell on top of you. You could still feel the broken piece of pipe tear through the flesh of your thigh and pin you to the ground as you struggled to breathe under the weight of the rubble and the weight of watching your friends get sucked out of the growing hole in the Enterprise’s hull and into the cold clutches of space.

With shaking hands you raised the thermos to your lips again, but it was empty. Hadn’t it just been full? You shook your head, ignoring the obvious answer, and threw it across the room instead. It landed with a metallic thud that echoed in the empty room. You let it echo through your body. Concentrating on it. On anything besides the sinking feeling that hadn’t left your gut in over a year. You stared out into the deep expanse of space and tried to remember why you ever found it beautiful.

Your heart jumped to your throat as the alarm in the observation deck went off. You bolted up, looking around, preparing an exit, when your brain finally caught up and you realized it wasn’t an alarm. It was your comm. Specifically, it was Scotty asking where you were.

“Lunch was over an hour ago, love. We need ya back down ‘ere.” His voice was concerned, not angry, which only made you feel worse.

You slunk past everyone’s stares, ignoring the way the floor felt like it was twisting under your feet, as you crashed into a tool cart on the way back to your station. Scotty was at your side by the time you’d finished picking up the scattered tools. You muttered an apology and pushed past him before he could say anything.

You wanted to work. You needed to work, but your mind kept going anywhere else. To how dizzy you were. To how hot it felt. You’d already tied the top half of your coveralls down around your waist, and you were still sweating like you were in a sauna on Risa. God, you wanted a drink. I nice pint of lemonade or a Long Island Iced Tea. The perfect drink. Cold on the tongue but warm in the throat. You could pretend you were kicking up your feet on a beach somewhere, that all of your worries were gone for the day and it was just you and a few ocean waves lapping at your feet.

The smile that crept its way to your cheeks froze as your drill slipped out of the screw head you were driving in. Your body jerked forward as the drill head scraped down the metal pipe. You overcorrected, tilting back too far and sending the ladder the opposite direction. And then you were falling but you weren’t afraid. The ladder hit the ground before you did.

_ You ripped the window in your bedroom open, struggling to push the screen out. You could hear footsteps stomping up the stairs towards you and your heart pounded faster every time your dad screamed your name. You had to get out. At least until he was sober._

_You managed to shove the screen out just as the knob rattled. Your father cursed as he slammed himself against the locked door, but your feet were already on the roof outside. You were at the end of the driveway before you heard the door crash open. The cold air stung your lungs and you regretted not grabbing a jacket. You weren’t sure how long you’d be out here or where you were going for that matter. You only knew you were going to run until the road ended._

_A hand latched onto the back of your shirt, yanking you backwards. You thrashed away. You weren’t willing to face your dad tonight. Not like this. Your knees kissed the pavement as you finally broke free, and you flipped onto your back, crawling away from your father. Except it wasn’t your father. You almost wished it was._

_Jim stood before you, skin pale and waxy even in the moonlight. His eyes were sunken. His jaw slack. The world around you shimmered and moved until you no longer felt tar under your hands but cold metal. The still night air was replaced with blaring alarms and screeching metal and you reached to Jim for comfort but found your hands blocked by a glass screen and then his body went limp, falling forward. Falling towards the glass, towards you. Falling and falling and falling falling falling. _

Your eyes snapped open but you immediately pinched them shut under the harsh fluorescent lights above you. You could hear the heart rate monitor beeping frantically beside you, signalling trouble, and you tried to calm yourself down but could hardly hear your own thoughts above the machine before it went silent.

“That’s enough of that,” Bones grumbled, letting the plug go.

You cracked your eyes open to see him as he busied himself around the room. Looking at your chart. Waving a tricorder over you. Checking your chart again. His knuckles were white around the edges of the PADD. Jaw set and brow furrowed. You could tell he was pissed and trying to keep himself together.

You took a deep breath before plunging in: “What did I do?”

“What did you-” Bones started, catching his temper and reeling it back in. He pinched the bridge of his nose. It was quiet for a few minutes and you felt your throat tighten. Then Bones sighed. “You fell off a ladder. Drill broke your fall. The tip broke off and embedded in your shoulder. Broken wrist. Sprained ankle. Minor concussion.” Bones paused between each sentence, struggling to keep his voice level. “Oh, and withdrawal.” With that, Bones dropped the PADD onto your biobed and headed for the door.

“Withdrawal?” Your voice was so small you could barely hear it over the growing ache in your head.

Unfortunately for you, Bones did hear and he whirled around like a hurricane with its eye set on you. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare. You had a blood alcohol level of 0.27. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? How god damn idiotic it is? You could have-”

“Bones,” Jim said from the doorway. He shook his head gently when Bones met his gaze.

“What? Like you’re not gonna tell her the same damn thing. It was stupid and reckless and un-”

“Dr. McCoy that’s enough.” Jim gave Leonard his best ‘I’m the Captain so you’re going to listen to me’ stare and Bones finally closed his mouth, pushing past Jim and muttering something about not wanting to waste his time. You couldn’t bring yourself to watch him leave.

Silence fell as Jim pulled a chair to the side of your bed and sat, cradling his face in his hands. You tried to speak, but he shushed you, so you braced yourself for anger. Screaming. But, even as Jim leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling for an answer to some unasked question, anger never came. 

There was more pain in Jim’s voice than you’d ever heard. Even after Khan. After Krall. After visiting families to tell them their child wasn’t coming home this time. His voice felt like glass scraping your eardrum and breaking your heart. “Just….tell me why.”

You wanted to. More than anything you wanted to tell him, but what came out of your mouth instead was “Why what?”

Jim closed his eyes, and when he reopened them they were glassy. He still couldn’t look at you. “I should fire you.” It wasn’t a shock but a stab to the heart. “I should fire you and send you to the outpost on Delta Vega for the rest of this mission for endangering my crew.”

“I didn’t-”

“You were drunk.” Jim raised his voice now. Not angry but pleading. He leaned forward to look you in the eyes, but it was your turn to look away.

“I was just tightening some screws. I-”

“Today you were. Yesterday you were welding. The day before that you were using a plasma cutter. What if you had slipped with that? You could have killed someone. You could have killed yourself.”

“So fire me then,” you snapped. You finally met Jim’s gaze with your own, hoping he could feel the venom in the air. He was almost as stubborn as you, though, holding your glare longer than an impartial captain should have. Finally, he sighed again and reached for your hand.

His touch was feather light, like a blade of grass brushing your bare skin. Then, his fingers were working their way between yours and it felt more right than anything had in your whole life. Jim’s thumb, soft as you remembered, stroked the top of your hand and you felt every ounce of fight leave you while he spoke. “I went through the security footage of the observation decks. We used to go there together for lunch, but I guess you go alone now.” It was a question. One you weren’t ready to answer. “Is this why we broke up? Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Then why?” Jim squeezed your hand tighter and his eyes bore into you, screaming for you to look at him but you couldn’t bring yourself to. You’d let the silence speak for you until it, too, became too overwhelming. For Jim it already was, and you heard him, the great James Tiberius Kirk - the same Jim Kirk who beat the Kobayashi Maru, who became captain of the Enterprise in his first year out of the academy, the same Jim Kirk that took on and defeated Krall single-handedly and still made it to the party in Yorktown full of smiles and jokes. You heard that Jim beg.

“Please. I don’t want to fire you. I love you so much it scares me, and I just want to help, but I can’t do that if you won’t tell me what’s wrong, so please. Please, talk to me.”

You couldn’t look at Jim. You were sure if you did the last shred of composure you were clinging to would snap, and Jim deserved better than that. He deserved the truth no matter how hard and ugly it was, so you told him. Between gasps and sobs, you told him about the nightmares and the anxiety and the crushing feeling of being alive.

“And I didn’t want to tell you because you died. I mean sure what happened to me was shit but you honest to god died and now every time there’s a red alert I’m afraid it’s going to happen again and I don’t know how else to stop being afraid. I can’t even go to engineering without having a panic attack which is why I started drinking in the first place.”

“We can reassign you.”

“To what,” you laughed cynically. “I can’t do anything else Jim. This is the only thing I’m good at.” You shook your head, eyes still stinging but body no longer able to produce tears. “My parents were right. I’m just not cut out for this.”

“Hey, hey. Look at me.” Jim shook your hand gently until you looked at him. “That’s not true. You were top in your class and probably the only person in the whole fleet who could give Scotty a run for his money.”

“And what ship is gonna take me when I get fired for drinking on the job?”

“About that,” Jim said sliding back into the chair and into Captain Mode. “I think I have a mutually beneficial solution to our predicament.”

You smiled, hoping to ease some tension. “So you picked up a dictionary since we broke up, huh?”

The corners of Jim’s mouth twitched up. “A week’s suspension unpaid, during which you will meet with a psychiatrist. You and the doctor can decide how many sessions a week you’ll do after.”

You let out a sigh of relief, knowing this was a slap on the wrist at best. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Yes, I want you to check in with me at least once a week over dinner in my quarters.” You raised an eyebrow at Jim, who finally cracked a smile. “Okay, that one’s not mandatory, but I still hope you’ll agree.”

“I don’t know. Are you sure once a week is enough? I’m thinking maybe twice a week. With overnight supervision.”

Jim laughed, and it was the best sound you’d ever heard. “Yeah, I think that can be arranged.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr @trade-baby-blues


End file.
